Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
This past July, Howard Chua-Eoan wrote on Bloomberg: In 1931, the Politburo ordered the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow; it was built by Czar Alexander I to commemorate Napoleon’s retreat from the city and the…
Following up on the Karamazovs, an obvious remark. It is said that Dostoevsky’s portrayal of women was lacking next to his male characters. It is not generally true – The Idiot is a counterexample – but The Brothers Karamazov is…
On Hope by Tara Isabella Burton in the Hedgehog Review: In order to accept our lives as a comedy, we must accept that none of us are the heroes we imagine ourselves to be. This is the truth understood by…
Alexander Van der Bellen has been re-elected President of Austria. As I wrote in 2016, when he won his first term, Van der Bellen’s ancestors had moved from the Netherlands to Russia in the 18th century. They lived in Pskov…
Mikhail Shishkin, in The Atlantic: The world is surprised at the quiescence of the Russian people, the lack of opposition to the war. But this has been their survival strategy for generations—as the last line of Pushkin’s Boris Godunov puts…
On February 12, 1942, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: If I were an Englishman I would tremble for the fate of the Empire. Taken out of context, it was a sensible call, although it didn’t take a genius to…
One of Hitler’s recurring tropes was the German empire’s and nation’s “remorseless struggle for existence.” Nazi officials beat that horse to death, and then some: There can be no compromise in Germany’s struggle for its existence, no turning back, no…
A sequel to the post on the Treaty of Kars centenary (1921-2021). In much of the XIX century, Britain and France propped up the weak Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against Russian expansion. With the rise of the Entente Cordiale,…
Of nothing in particular. Ruins of Ivan Zholtovsky’s puzzling pavilion, grainy rain clouds above, a pop-artsy fence, and tired, lifeless grass in the foreground: Dusk in Gorky Park. By way of explanation, a quote by Alexandra Selivanova pasted from this…
About ten days ago, Language Hat wrote about the 1928 novel The Cynics by Anatoly Mariengof (alternatively transliterated as Marienhof): Given its low profile, I probably wouldn’t have read it if Joseph Brodsky hadn’t called it one of the most…
I should have posted this two days ago, on March 5. Better late than never: March 5 is the day Stalin died in 1953, the so-called Cheyne-Stokes Day. In 2016, I wrote two more posts about that day of deliverance:…
A name from the poetic anthology mentioned in this post of mine has surfaced in a comment to a post at Language Hat: Elinor Wylie. Velvet Shoes was the only poem by Wylie I could recall. In the comment linked…